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NBC Aims For Stability Through Redundancy In Athens

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-feeds-please dept.

Darren writes "With the Athens Olympics just 27 days away NBC is gearing up for a massive 1210 hours of coverage (that's enough to watch TV over 50 days of Olympics 24/7). The infrastructure needed to provide such coverage is huge, and the potential for problems is significant. As a result NBC are taking all precautions possible and over the 17 days of competition they will utilize three satellite network linkups and three land-based connections to ensure they always have a connection. The mind boggles at what it is all going to cost - but I'm sure their advertising revenue will make it worth their while."

6 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. NBC has the backbone by toetagger1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    NBC is owned by GE, which in turn owns GE Energy. With the resent history of power outages on July 13 in Grece, I wonder how they back up against that?

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  2. Advertising revenue will skyrocket... by crashnbur · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...because everyone will be watching hoping to be glued to their TV when/if a blackout or terrorist attack hits. There's no news like bad news, and nothing can replace the ego of an American who can say he/she "saw it as it happened".

    (I don't think I will intentionally watch any of the Olympics, because I'll be out looking for a job and preparing for grad school.)

  3. Olympics not profitable for television by Jayfar · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The mind boggles at what it is all going to cost - but I'm sure their advertising revenue will make it worth their while.

    The networks generally lose millions on the olympic broadcasts - it's a prestige thing for them. Maybe they gain some small advantage in viewership for subsequent sports programming.

    1. Re:Olympics not profitable for television by DocScience4 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's what is known as a "loss leader" in the broadcasting industry. Not only is it (though marginally) for getting people to watch other sports, and overall "prestige", but mainly it delivers a sizeable audience to which they can promote their new and incumbent shows.

      They can also charge a premium rate for certain events on NBC (akin to the Super Bowl), and can provide more limited-appeal sports to narrowly-focused audiences in non-prime-time, as well as on their ancillary (e.g. USA) networks.

  4. Wonder why they chose the same service provider... by syrinje · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ...AT&T for all the six links. I would have thought it made sense to go with multiple service providers if I was spreading out my options for 99.9% availability.

    I just loved this gem from the link in the article "NBC will be able to send live feeds from Greece to the U.S. over all six links at once or use them for separate transmissions." Hmmm...six identical high-speed digital transmissions of Marion Jones tumbling in ignominy - yeeesh, wot a waste of bandwidth!

    Now here is an article about the design of the media center and its redundant systems that is more in tune with my ./er persona

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  5. Redundancy in filming American competitors by synx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So NBC will have redundancy - so you won't miss a minute of your favourite American competitor! Most people I know joke about NBC's coverage of the Olympics - its laughable. They'll show an event, then when the American loses they'll cut to a new event.

    Contrast this with CBC and BBC which cover entire events regardless of who wins or loses.

    So those who get cable, time to watch CBC for _full_ coverage of the Olympics!